The state house waiting list is on the way up again.
When Labour came to power five and a half years ago there were just over 5,000 on the state house waiting list. Today there are 24,081.
It looked as though the waiting list may have peaked a year ago and began to come down. However, it’s on the way up again. The latest figures show an increase of 954 families in “serious and persistent” housing need in the first three months of 2023.
Imagine for a moment how utterly outraged Labour would be if these appalling figures were produced under a National-led government!
The decrease since March 2022 was always smoke and mirrors in any case. It was not because low-income tenants and families got places in state houses but because they were managed off the waiting list.
Grant Robertson’s 2023 “no frills” budget has promised 3000 more “public” houses by 2025. How pitiful is that in the face of the 24,081 on the state house waiting list? Labour is determined to keep state houses at just 3.6% of the total housing stock rather than the 5.5% it was in 1990.
They can’t get out from under their neo-liberal comfort blanket – those on the lowest incomes have been sacrificed in Labour’s relentless focus on the middle class.
It’s 40 years since Labour’s Roger Douglas gutted the welfare state and Labour remains as attached to his legacy as ever.
It’s futile to expect better from Labour but where are the Greens? We should expect the Greens to be campaigning hard for more state houses. I haven’t seen it. Has anyone?
Te Pati Māori looks the best option by a long way for election 2023.
This is the inevitable result of several decades of pandering to the professionally feckless. It’s like feeding stray cats.
These numbers can’t be massaged in any positive way–there needs to be a State House & Apartment mega build for a decade at least, including new emergency housing (not motels), tiny house precincts for solo homeless and support for increased Papakāinga on Māori owned land. With gouging local developers and building/supply industries, the Govt. needs to source flat packs from China and Europe to get things humming.
NZ Labour, let alone the filthy Natzos will not go there because of their entrenched neo liberal orthodoxy. I don’t include ACT because they would prefer a “final solution” of some sort for the bottom 50% and public housing. So, “Generation Rent” has to force the two main parties into it with political organisation and direct action–a united new left movement is sorely needed and Te Pāti Māori are sure leading the way at the moment.
A growth sector at the moment is Food Banks!–and despite legislation–“pay day loans” at extortionate rates. The middle classes need to wake up and join the rest of us, perhaps a few do get it now after the cyclones that have wrecked or disrupted many of their homes and lives.
Yes an industrial style state house build by the bloody government. Not for contractors to cream it off.
“We should expect the Greens to be campaigning hard for more state houses. I haven’t seen it.”
They are… in Australia! (And England. And the U.S.)
Not even the middle strata have been served by these extreme economic policies, regardless of what pandering politicians may say.
The ‘proletarianisation’ of the white-collar workers, who are sometimes paid less than semi-skilled labourers, has divorced the interests of the bottom 90% of the intelligentsia from the upper strata. The vast majority are not petty businessmen or self-employed, and have not been for many decades now.
As such, half of the strikes in the current strike wave are from the intelligentsia (teachers, nurses, academics etc.) Extreme individualism and the petty-bourgeois outlook is increasingly replaced with a pro-worker, pro-union, progressive stance.
Mass unemployment is about to hit scientific workers and technicians, as the computer industry begins to engage in huge layoffs.
When people bemoan the “death of the middle class”, what they are really talking about is the destruction of working class living standards in general.
That increased demand is what you get when welfare beneficiaries are better housed than people who actually work for a living.
A false dichotomy. State housing was intended for all workers, and the Full Employment Policy had abolished unemployment.
Like those living in Loafers lodge?
Fantail. Loafers Lodge was lucrative private enterprise, nor state or council housing, although ultimately subsidised one way or another by we, the tax payers. Robbie makes a valid point though. Homes, fittings, fixtures, insulation, heating, white ware etc provided for social housing tenants is of better quality than those who help them frequently have themselves, although the latter are less likely to trash them, if they could afford to buy them in the first place.
Why are people still using the waiting list argument National made it harder for people to be eligible this is why the list for state housing has blown out. National also made it harder for people to get legal aide. Both policies used a much higher threshold of income and stricter criteria to be eligible cutting many of.
I was a State Housing Corporation tenant for many years and the staff were racist and discriminative under both National and Labour. National knocked down so many blocks of state flats, I lived in areas they knocked them down so what do you expect. National knocked them down and replaced them with 800k dwellings so what do you expect, now where are the poor supposed to live up a tree or maybe in a cave or their car if they own one.
Beat up the mom and dad private landlords, present them as the scum of the earth, and this is the result. They exit providing rentals!!!
Typical labour policy unable to comprend the collaterall effects of ” wouldnt it be good to do this”
Coupled with notion that focus groups and meetings of officials can actually get out and build houses.
This result was never in doubt
So the mom & Pop landlords sold out to first home buyers? If landlords are exiting why isn’t the home ownership rate rising? I call bs on your idea that landlords are exiting the rental market.
Go and ask any land agent who does rentals and ask them why there is a shortage. They will tell you how it is!
If the State was a better landlord perhaps they would not have to fight so hard to get new houses built .Neighbors fear the influx of unruly tenants when these houses are completed and the State landlord will do nothing about it . I am sure most tenants are good and make an effort but the bad ones spoilt it for them .
The political donors won’t allow mass development of new council estates to resume. Limited supply means more profits for them.
I am all for the State building houses because they can do it cheaper by buying in bulk . I am against councils building social housing as it is an unnecessary burden on rates .
Many of those that fit into the group that qualified for State houses need other help from social agentcies so if council and state both build for this group then they will need to double up on the agency help . When the rent is not paid the agency needs to have a team to follow up and find out why.The tenant may need budgeting advice or they are not well but do not know how to claim benefits due to them .
I have been an advocate for 2 people dealing with the staff at State Housing and found them rude and off hand .Perhaps better pay would attract better staff
Maybe look at the wages and incentives for the tradie generation that went to Oz because they don’t want to come back they are too busy building homes and fixing cars over there. Maybe look at the Polytech and associated training institutes with their woke and underhanded courses on synthetic dreaming or canape making etc, all straight from womens’ weekly fantasy department (or stuff) which promote one thousand ways to decorate your nails/one thousand ingratiating greetings/sustainable racism etc etc because actually there are not that many younger tradespeople here any more. There are plenty of houses sitting on blocks up and down the country but the renovations & services are so tied up with council permitting they seem doomed to stay where they are. There are also many ghost houses which could be used as emergency housing with a law change, for instance if unoccupied for a certain period then be requisitioned. Hell, we’re quick enough to seize russian assets and proceeds of crime so not that draconian really.
I think the biggest problem is the “not in my neighborhood” issue.
Read the media every time a new state housing development is announced.
do. Christchurch City Council, historically, had policy of interspersing their social housing in existing suburbs, rather than building big blocks en masse, where a ghetto or ghetto mentality can develop. I think the nice house where John key grew up in leafy Bryndwr was this type of housing, in a stable established suburb, and importantly, with good state schools nearby.
Our Council ‘Otautahi’ has more social housing than any other Council in the country. That is something to be proud of. Looking after our most vulnerable! Not that shit in the building in Wellington. He is a shit the guy that owns it, there was junk all down the corridor and one of the exists was blocked. Someone who lived told us this! If he hires a manager to run the place how often does he go there to check that it is being properly run.
My question on what is built, how many or what % is state housing for everyone versus Iwi Housing vs first home buyer?
Comments are closed.